Effect
by Jedi1514
Summary: Yukimura's illness hit them like a freight train, and effected their lives just as much.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Prince of Tennis.**

**A/N: Something that wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it**

**Effect**

**Yagyuu**

Yagyuu was never very close to Yukimura. In fact, he would even go as far to say that he was the least close to him. However, Yukimura's illness shattered him all the same.

He had never felt as helpless, as useless as he did when he was staring at Yukimura laying limply in that damn hospital bed, his already ailing health taking a very obvious turn for the worst.

That had only fueled his drive to become the excellent doctor his teammates knew he would somebody be. The regulars had even set up their own betting pool the first year of high school as to what type of doctor he would be.

Sanada guessed he would be a cardiologist, while Jackal bet he would be an outstanding optometrist. Yanagi and Marui had both taken Sanada's side, while Kirihara claimed, for reasons unknown to them, that Yagyuu would be a pediatrician. Yukimura stated he did not gamble when asked, but he silently agreed with the majority of his team.

And thus they were all shocked, and down a few yen, when Yagyuu announced that he'd be studying neurology in university. All except Niou, who had known since the first time he and Yagyuu visited Yukimura in the hospital. In the hospital, with the damn bed, his ailing health, and the helpless expression on Yagyuu's face.

**Jackal**

Jackal was strong. He was solid. He was reliable. He was a lot of things that eventually made him into the support pillar for his team.

He was there when Akaya came crying, shaking and upset because he'd hurt someone again and just didn't know how to stop.

He was there when Sanada was pushed well beyond his limits, too weary and stressed to be angry and needed someone to listen for once.

He was there when Yanagi had carried around brochures for Seigaku in his bag, right next to a picture of his old doubles partner.

He was there when Yagyuu needed someone to listen to how he really felt without trying egging him on.

He was there when Niou broke down after everyone else left, because attention from pranks really wasn't an adequate substitute for attention from his parents.

He was there when Marui needed a running partner and went through sugar withdrawal because he was afraid he would lose his spot on the regulars.

He was there when Yukimura fell.

Except, he really wasn't. He found himself unable to support Yukimura and keep him strong when their captain needed him most. And he hated himself for it.

He was crumbling, he realized, because Yukimura had always been his support.

So he rebuilt himself, made himself stronger. Became a free-standing pillar with the pieces Yukimura gave him.

**Niou**

Niou Masaharu craved attention. Well, more like had an all-consuming obsession with it, but that was not entirely his fault. Or even really his fault at all.

Yukimura had given him attention that his pranks hadn't. Caring attention.

Staying over at Niou's house and playing video games with him until the early hours of the morning, despite having morning practice, just because Niou didn't like being alone in the grand, empty mansion.

Letting Niou sleep over because his parents were home at the same time and that meant yelling much too loud for Niou's sensitive ears.

Making him a cake with little frosting tennis balls that somehow managed to look like pac-man because homemade was better than any gourmet, store-bought "delicacy" his parents could send him.

And when Yukimura fell ill, Niou was the one giving the attention, drawing them inexplicably close. Not as close as he became with Yagyuu, or as close as Yukimura and Sanada were, but close enough for Niou and Yagyuu's six or so foster kids to call him Uncle Seiichi when he stopped by for a visit.

**Marui**

When Marui made the regulars in his second year of junior high, Yukimura had altogether ignored his absurd consumption of sweets.

His third year, Yukimura had pulled him aside and told him that if he didn't learn to play without them, he could kiss his regulars spot good-bye.

Yukimura had then enlisted the help of Niou and Kirihara, and together they had hid every single sweet in Marui's possession. Every once in a while they would be found in the oddest of places. Stuffed into a can of tennis balls, or taped to one of the pipes under the sink in the locker room. Marui struggled and strained to increase his endurance. He ran and climbed and reluctantly let his sweets disappear.

Until Yukimura was hospitalized.

His will to go to the gym and run diminished. He slept in on Sundays instead of going on his hike. The sweets stopped disappearing. And as he ate his cake before the Kantou finals, he realized how weak he was compared to Yukimura.

He felt uncomfortable throughout the match, the cake churning in his stomach in a way it never had before. He tried to tell himself that it was okay, that this was an important match, but he kept seeing Yukimura's smiling face.

That night at dinner he ordered a salad, and drank water instead of soda. It would have been odd if any of his teammates had bothered to notice. And when they went in to talk to talk to Yukimura, Marui could not meet his captain's eyes, though for a different reason from his teammates.

When Yukimura returned, they stopped finding hidden sweets. There were none to hide. And the next year when they handed out the cliché "get to know you" worksheets on the first day, Marui didn't write "bakery owner" or "baker" under future career for once. And when he opened up his small sandwich shop in Tokyo, he watched proudly as his former captain cut the large ribbon.

**Kirihara**

Akaya was their baby, always doted upon, always been given special care. Always been able to do and act however he wanted.

But when their captain fell ill, no one had time to dote anymore, and his childish antics were no longer seen as cute, but rather as nuisances.

So he decided to grow up. His childish bursts of anger gave way to all consuming rage, and small fits of violence turned into his feared bloodshot mode.

His guidance, his role model, his captain was gone. And even when he returned he was still gone, too consumed with winning to realize the horribly wrong path his charge had gone down.

When they lost at nationals, sharp, bitter defeat brought his world into startling clarity. Only then did he realize that Akaya had grown up the completely wrong way. Yukimura set about rectifying this immediately, and eventually Akaya grew up the "right" way according to Yukimura.

Although, Yukimura was never able to teach Akaya the meaning of the word modesty. Or any word in English really.

**Yanagi**

Yanagi's words were infallible, they were truth. This was fact, taken as such by nearly everybody at Rikkaidai. Nobody doubted the Master. The Master did not even doubt himself until he was proven completely, and utterly wrong.

At the beginning of every month he recorded the status of his teammates. Strengths, weaknesses, _health. That_ month he recorded that everyone was perfectly healthy, especially their captain. He was in perfect health, until that one day when Yanagi's unshakable faith in his data was irreparably shattered. He doubted. What else could he be wrong about?

But he continued to predict. Continued to speak words that were taken as fact, but he no longer turned his back, confident. Now he watched, diligently made sure he was truly correct before he jumped into his next prediction. If anything they were even more accurate, but still there was doubt.

Before the accident, he had never uttered an absolute. Never taken a chance. But the doubt made him bold, gave him strength of will he was unaware he possessed. So when Akaya, too afraid to voice the question aloud meekly wrote for Yanagi on the clubhouse whiteboard, "Will buchou ever come back?" there was no hesitation.

The words "100 percent chance of return" stayed there on the board. It was fact. It would stay there until the event came to pass.

And there was doubt. Dark, shadowy doubt that surrounded the words and tainted them. And even when the words were proven true the doubt remained. Made a home in the back of Yanagi's mind, and, as Yukimura pointed out to him later, he was better for it.

**Sanada**

Sanada felt lost; there was really no other way to describe it. Without the shining star that was Yukimura in the sky to illuminate the way, he was lost. His star was trapped, cooped up in a small, bleak hospital room.

The first day Sanada went to visit his star he brought flowers, bright yellow daisies, and news of the team.

Every day Sanada went to visit, even the day he was sick with a fever. It was nothing next to what his star faced. He felt guilty even calling it an illness.

As time went by Sanada's view of his star changed. Yukimura's face lost its fullness, becoming gaunt, and the dark circles beneath his eyes became more pronounced, but the twinkle in his sapphire eyes remained and, if anything, grew stronger. They sparkled with the will to live, with courage and strength. With a hint of fear only he was allowed to see.

Sanada began to notice things about his star. The way his nose crinkled when he was displeased, and the furrow in his brow when he was tired. The laugh lines around his eyes, and the way his hair fell into his eyes when he didn't have a headband to hold it back.

The last time Sanada visited, two weeks after the surgery, and one day before his star returned to the sky, he brought roses.

**Rikkaidai**

When Yukimura returned there was a grand party planned. However parties, Yukimura said, were for those who won the Kantou tournament.

The regulars smiled as they did their laps. They laughed as they did their push-ups and squats and lunges.

When Seigaku won the nationals, they sat there for a moment, stunned. Surely Yukimura's return should have secured their victory? But despite their shock, anger, and sadness, they got to their feet and waited to congratulate the winners. It hurt; watching their opponents throw the freshman wonder into the air, but they grit their teeth bore it, swearing revenge in their minds all the while.

As they left that night, silver medals around their necks and disappointment in their hearts, Sanada pulled a still shocked Yukimura into a warm embrace. Yukimura looked up, startled, but then smiled at his vice-captain. Sanada smiled back and pulled his star into a light kiss while his time watched on in amusement.

They were together. They were strong. They were Rikkaidai.


End file.
